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&<je Utoitt of tije 2Lortr : 

A SERMON, 

PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, WASHINGTON, 

BY REQUEST OF THE VESTRY, 

Cm j?riDa» before Igcerigion ©ay, 5? our teem!) of jEtap, 1841, 

THE DAY OF HUMILIATION, FASTING, AND PRAYER, RECOMMENDED BY 
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 

ON OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF 

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, 

LATE PRESIDENT; 
By WILLIAM ROLLINSON WHITTINGHAM, D. D., 

BISHOP OF MARYLAND. 

(PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE VESTRY.) 



WASHINGTON : 
PUBLISHED BY WM. MORRISON. 

1841. 






3-"}? 



WASHINGTON : 

PRINTED BY PETER FORCE, 

TENTH STREET. 



It may be proper to state that Bishop Whittingham, shortly after the 
death of the late President, had been requested by the Rector and Vestry 
of St. John's Church to preach at an early day on the subject of the 
national bereavement, in the church to which General Harrison belonged, 
in which he was accustomed to kneel before the Majesty of Heaven and 
worship the God of his fathers ; but, owing to previous appointments of 
the Bishop for a visitation to a remote part of the Diocess, which occupied 
some weeks, it was unavoidably delayed until the very judicious appoint- 
ment of a day by President Tyler, for fasting, humiliation, and prayer. On 
this solemn occasion, and from the great regard so generally entertained 
for the high office and character of the deceased President, the interior of 
the church was clad in deep mourning. The pulpit and desk, the chancel 
and communion altar, with the ascent to the pulpit, were hung with black 
drapery, together with the whole circle of the gallery, including the organ 
and the gallery of the choir. 

But the most impressive object that struck the eye, was the deserted 

pew the vacant seat of the late President. Its conspicuous location near 

the chancel, and being covered with black velvet, rendered its appearance 
so appalling as at once to awe the best feelings of the heart with the 
solemnity of death. For, notwithstanding the great concourse in attend- 
ance, among whom were the President and other high officers of the Go. 
vernment, no one presumed to enter its solemn precincts. Indeed, from 
the day it was clad in mourning, for the funeral obsequies, to the present, 
no human being appeared disposed to invade its sable enclosure ; the place 
seemed sacred, and loudly to speak in the still voice of silent bereavement, 
what was proclaimed at the Capital at the time of his decease, and echoed 
from every town, village, and hamlet, throughout this vast nation—" THE 

PRESIDENT IS DEAD!" 

William Hawlev. 



SERMON 



AMOS, iii : 8— THE LORD OOD HATH SPOKEN. Who CAN but PROPHESY ? 

On an occasion like this, brethren, few words and 
plain best become the speaker. No eloquence can 
equal that of the fact. Each member of the auditory 
feels more than the orator dare hope to be able to ex- 
press. The voice of God is recognized by all, and 
man's fittest part is to be silent. 

It is as one put in trust with the Gospel that I am 
here, to entreat men like myself to listen to that voice, 
and learn from it the true lesson it is teaching. No 
eulogy, of the dead shall be attempted. The sorrow 
of a whole people is his best eulogy. The united 
voices of those who so lately waged a bitter contest 
on his account speak his praise, and supersede the 
poor efforts of one who had not the privilege to know 
him, and certainly has not the power to do his noble- 
hearted simplicity, integrity, and uprightness, any 
justice. Thousands of tongues and pens shall be 
occupied with the theme of a life and character as 
which, perhaps, it could be hardly possible to select 



6 

a specimen at once so favorable and so true of the 
genuine American. 

The pulpit has other themes and another errand. 
Not the praise of the departed, however just; nor jet 
the grief of the bereaved, however bitter; but the 
benefit of surviving mortals, fast hastening to that 
account which he whom they mourn has gone to ren- 
der, demands the attention of a Minister of Christ, 
permitted to address his fellow-sinners in his Master's 
name. 

We may derive benefit from this dispensa- 
tion, AS AN ASTOUNDING EXAMPLE OF THE INSTA- 
BILITY OF LIFE. 

" Here we have no continuing city," said the in- 
spired Apostle. All life proves the truth, and all men 
own it ; and yet every fresh instance comes upon us 
as a startling call to the half-awakened sleeper : he 
rouses, looks around, thinks he has been dreaming, 
and lays him down to fresh slumbers. So we see the 
grave yawn before us, and devour all that we covet 
and all that we make our stay, and, for the moment, 
stand awe-struck in contemplation of eternity; but 
in the next, engage anew in life's ceaseless round, 
with as much earnestness and zest as ever, and go on, 
planning and desiring, laboring and striving to at- 
tain, with as few misgivings about the nature and 
value of our occupations as though we had yet to 
learn that we are mortal. 



Never, perhaps, did God in mercy teach that les- 
son to the world more signally, than in the blow just 
inflicted on this people. Death comes suddenly in 
the battle field, in the hour of victory ; but when 
Gustavus fell at Lutzen, though Europe mourned 
the champion of religious freedom snatched from her 
in her utmost need, she felt that death had but claimed 
his own, in a fitting time and place. It is in the hour 
of such triumph as that with which this capital re- 
sounded but as yesterday, that the death-summons 
thrills with horrid blare on the unexpecting ear ; and 
the thousands of thousands who exulted in aspirations, 
and plans, and labors crowned with complete success, 
by the exaltation of the man whom they loved to 
honor, and in whom their hopes concentered as the 
chosen instrument of prosperity and glory to the na- 
tion, raise one wild cry of utter disappointment, when 
the hand of Heaven interposes and takes back the 
reclaimed loan, which they fondly looked on as their 
own. Not that any had forgotten that he whom they 
had raised to rule — hero, patriot, and sage, as they 
deemed that he had proved himself, and father of his 
people, as he already more than promised to become — 
was but a mere man, and, as such, miserable and mor- 
tal. We knew it, as we know that it will shortly be 
our turn to follow him ; and realized it just as little. 
Calculations, favorable and adverse, expectations 
and apprehensions, hopes and doubts, all turned on 



8 

the will and ability of him to whom the reins of 
government had been committed. The gaze of every 
eye, the theme of every tongue, the very hinge of 
changes in which millions of freemen professed to 
anticipate the conservation or destruction of their 
boasted institutions and blood-bought rights, our late 
Chief Magistrate stood before his country, after a 
contest such as has no precedent in its annals, in an 
eminence and responsibility almost equally unprece- 
dented. Scarcely are his feet planted on the proud 
elevation, when the grave opens, and he is gone ! 

" On the verge 
Of exultation hangs a dirge." 

Truly, " man, being in honor, abideth not, and the 
thoughts of man, in his best estate, are but vanity !" 
There is no station of life to which this warning 
does not come home. We have each of us a sphere of 
influence to fill, a round of duty to discharge. To 
none of us can the occupation of that field of in- 
fluence and duty be more assured than his was whom 
God hath taken. How few of us so occupy it as if 
we believed the fact ! In truth, we do not believe 
it. We assure ourselves that there will be time for 
the accomplishment of our designs and completion 
of our undertakings, and are content to rest on the 
miserable security. Who among us turns all his op- 
portunities to account at once ? Who does not nurse 
his darling projects of reform to be commenced, good 



y 

to be effected, influence to be used, example to be set, 
principles to be followed out, at some future and more 
convenient season ? Alas ! did not even he who in 
so many respects, by his noble promptness, set a 
bright example of turning the present to account, in 
one belie his principle, and die without the comfort 
of his Lord's ordinance, because he had postponed 
the acknowledged duty, but not sufficiently appre- 
ciated the privilege? How many of those who now 
hear me are more or less distinctly cherishing like in- 
tentions of future advancement in the path of duty, 
and appropriation of advantage which they cannot 
bring themselves to relinquish utterly, but find it in- 
convenient to claim and use at once ? I dare not 
guess, and fear to know ; but it needs little ac- 
quaintance with the deceitful ways of the world to 
be assured that they are many. Schemes of gain, 
of ambition, of industry, of patriotism, of benevo- 
lence even, so absorb the faculties of attention, that 
there is no leisure for religion, with its awful realities 
and solemn duties. The very man who reverences 
its claims, and honors its observances, so long as 
they remain mere general forms, with sincere respect, 
says daily, in effect, to the Lord from heaven, who 
bought him with his own blood on Calvary, " Go 
thy way for this time ; when I have a more conve- 
nient season, I will call for thee." Day after day steals 



10 

on, and each, as it drops into the ocean of past eternity,, 
carries with it a portion of the life of that man's soul; 
for each diminishes the opportunity and the probability 
of his turning to his God. " Hope deferred maketh 
the heart sick," and none so well know it as they 
who frequent the avenues of this mart of place and 
power; but oh, when will they learn the horrible 
deadliness of that sickness which chiils the heart that 
has itself deferred repentance and living faith ? And 
for what deferred them ? For that which cannot sa- 
tisfy, which they cannot control, which they can in 
no way so surely attain and realize, as by the personal 
self-devotion to the service of Cod reconciled in Christ, 
which they inconsiderately regard as conflicting with 
their aims and duties. They seek peace, happiness, 
it may be, usefulness. Peace is a delusion, and hap- 
piness a lie, to the man who seeks them not in God. 
Usefulness is the gift of God, and the growth of faith 
and holiness. 

Take the highest from of social duty, that of the 
statesman and ruler, for example. His ends and means 
are alike out of his own control, and wholly within 
that of one who has promised to make all things 
work together for good to those who love Him. Is 
it not self-evident, that to seek the fulfilment of that 
promise must be his highest wisdom ? That the first 
step towards sure results must be the sincere acknow- 
ledgment of the Power on which only they depend ? 



II 

As LEADING TO THAT ACKNOWLEDGMENT BY FUR- 
NISHING A SIGNAL PROOF OF God's SOVEREIGN DIS- 
POSAL OF EVENTS, JUDGMENT MAY BECOME A MERCY 
TO US IN THE DISPENSATION FOR WHICH WE GRIEVE. 

Death is always awful. Sudden death, in any in- 
stance, tends to excite alarm and horror. But the 
death of the head of a people is an event hroadiy dis- 
tinguished from that of any other member of society, 
be his station, character, or influence, what they may. 
It is the interposition of the Lord and Giver of Life 
to assert his sovereignty in a way that admits of 
neither doubt nor cavil, and comes home to the con- 
viction of every one. No individual so lowly, that 
he has not a direct interest in the loss : none so far 
removed as not to feel it. The symbol of his nation- 
ality, the centre of the circle in which his rights and 
duties are bound up, is gone; and a hand unseen, 
but irresistible, is perceived to have been there, 
giving token of its inevitable grasp. 

It is true that wise provision for the contingency 
hinders the nation from being left without an actuai 
head ; but the loss is none the less real and sensible. 
The fellow-being whom the people chose to be the 
depositary of its honor, power, and energy, is snatched 
away, and God, by His visitation, substitutes another. 
Demonstration is given of the unpalatable truth, that 
the deliberate resolve of a great nation may be futile 
as an infant's whim, and the action of its combined 



12 

millions inconsequential as the freak of a madman, 
when the will of Him who made us interferes. 

Nor is that all. The absolute subjection of the 
policy and standing of this people, as a people, to the 
divine control, is written with a sunbeam on the page 
that records the death of its departed President. It 
is admitted that no change may have been actually 
produced, in this instance, in its counsels and admin- 
istration; but who so blind as not to see that the same 
power which has only showed itself, might as easily be 
so put forth as at once to bring counsel to nought and 
frustrate execution ? The summons that called away 
the dead, speaks to each survivor in the language 
once addressed to the Jewish state, " Can thine heart 
endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that 
I shall deal with thee ? I the Lord have spoken it, 
and will do it." 

Now if there be one thing declared plainly to all of 
every degree in the revelation which God has vouch- 
safed us of His will, it is this: that the counsels and 
course of those who serve Him in singleness of heart 
and simple faith shall prosper, while the policy of the 
worldly minded and unbelieving shall be brought to 
nought. And, brethren, though I know that the de- 
fective views with which men read the book of his- 
tory have hindered very many, perhaps most, from 
the perception of the fact, yet it may be fearlessly and 
not unadvisedly asserted, that the teaching of that 



13 

book is entirely and most manifestly in accordance 
with that of revelation, on this point. The people 
that have served the Lord have prospered, and the 
governors that have ruled and taken counsel in His 
fear have been crowned with blessing, while disregard 
of His eternal laws, and rebellion against His will, in 
national plans and undertakings, have brought ruin 
and destruction in their train, from the earliest dawn 
of history until now. Vengeance may have overtaken 
crime with varying degrees of swiftness, and blessing 
may have assumed various, and sometimes, to mere 
human eyes, unlovely forms ; but the road they travel 
has been and ever will be sure. What was specially 
declared in prophecy of Israel, is historically true in its 
most general application: " The work of righteousness 
shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quiet- 
ness and assurance for ever." How awfully inte- 
resting, then, is the proof that we have just received 
of the power of Him whose truth is pledged to such 
results! It is the glittering of "the sword of the 
Almighty, sharpened to make sure slaughter; shall 
we then make mirth ?" 

God be thanked that, by wise counsel, and His 
blessing to give the people a willing heart, this day's 
solemnities evince a very different disposition. They 
infuse a strange mixture of joy into the sadness of the 
Christian, as he joins in spirit with the multitudes 
gathered in ten thousand temples, to bear their testi- 



14 

mony tliat the Lord reigneth, and to plead with Him 
to turn away His judgments. Sad as any but a most 
unenviably apathetic heart must be, in the contempla- 
tion of so signal a proof of the worth lessness ot human 
hopes and human greatness, the true philanthropist 
must find comfort in the temper with which the peo-' 
pie that, of all under the sun, perhaps, most needs the 
lesson of self distrust and subjection to a higher pow- 
er, has received it. He may mourn God's visitation — 
and, as a man and a citizen, it were to his shame if he 
did not — buthe must rejoice at the profit which seems 
already growing out of it, or he were a recreant to 
still higher obligations. 

The danger is, lest this formal recognition of the Di- 
vine sovereignty be merely formal, transient and un- 
productive of any good effects or influence on character, 
national and individual. It is easy in words to own 
the sway of Him who is invisible, and even outwardly 
to bend the knee before Him, and yet be devoid of 
any real appreciation of that sway. To own it in 
truth, is to rejoice in it, and to strive to work it out, 
unless we share the temper and prospect of those 
miserable spirits who have forever estranged them- 
selves from the Author of their being. There is no 
neutrality in this matter — no absolute indifference. 
The will of God must be our law, the love of God 
our motive, the glory of God our end ; or we are, 
however ignorantly or unconsciously, arrayed against 



15 

Him, and in danger of the fearful consequences 
of the most unnatural rebellion, of creatures against 
their Creator — frail dependants against the Source 
and Sustainer of their existence. 

Such danger is but too obviously incurred by any 
slight, personal or national, of God's revelation of him- 
self in Christ. Admit its facts — of which it is hard to 
say whether greater boldness is required to deny their 
evidence, or credulity to swallow the enormous absur- 
dities consequent upon such denial — admit its facts, 
and obedience to that revelation becomes the test of 
submission to the Deity. The people or the man 
that puts it by and goes on regardless of its princi- 
ples and claims, is as really, though less grossly, in a 
state of opposition to the Supreme Ruler, as if engaged 
in idol worship. 

On this score, surely we have ground for shame 
and fear. God has not been in all our thoughts as a 
people ; and the land in its length and breadth teems 
with evidence how little His word and ordinances, 
His holy will and wondrous love, have been regarded 
by individuals. After long years of absolute godless- 
ness in all that gave us character as a nation, and 
the most fearful disregard of personal profession of 
religion on the part of men high in office and au- 
thority, it was as a gracious rain of heaven to a 
land parched with drought, when William Hknry 
Harrison appeared before his countrymen, to take 



16 

their highest magistracy as a gift from God, and pro- 
fessed the resolve to hold it in the strength which 
Christ supplies. He did not ascend the steps of that 
Capitol in vain, had he left behind him the memory 
of no other act, no other words, than those of humble 
self distrust, in which, as the head of a mighty nation, 
he bowed himself before his God, and sought a bless- 
ing from his Saviour. Noble profession ! Noble, be- 
cause none doubted, none dared to doubt, its entire 
sincerity. How wondrously is the example urged 
home on us with power, by the mysterious dispensa- 
tion that followed on so closely ! The chord of 
sympathy which vibrated responsive to the avowal of 
religious motive in our President, from Maine to 
Florida, and from the Atlantic to the farthest West, 
had hardly been awakened, when the voice that 
called its answer forth was hushed forever! Its words 
are endowed with all the value of a legacy, and all 
the solemn weight of a message from the grave. Yes, 
departed leader, a " Christian people" hears it, and 
mourns thy loss as that of a Christian head; and this 
day testifies its veneration for thy memory, by fol- 
lowing thee to the throne of grace and mercy in its 
hour of trial ! 

We have approached that throne of grace, brethren, 
in words of humiliation and contrition. If they have 
been sincere, we have derived from our visitation a 
benefit which, we may not doubt, it was within the 



17 

the Divine design that this nation should receive from 
it. Whatever danger there may be in the particular 
interpretation of the Divine judgments, with reference 
to their special causes, there can be none in the gene- 
ral inference that they convey a message of rebuke, 
nor in the endeavor to search out what there is in us 
that may have deserved such rebuke, whether it called 
it forth or no. 

Our Maker explained the intention of His dealings 
with His chosen people to be " to prove them and to 
humble them, lest when they had eaten and were 
full, and had built goodly houses and dwelt therein, 
and had prospered in their labors and their gains, their 
hearts should be lifted up, and they should forget the 
Lord their God, and say in their heart, my power and 
the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth." 
It needs no surly moroseness nor snarling censorious- 
ness, to discover in this inspired description of a national 
character, which He who changeth not has stamped 
with His terrible disapproval, a too faithful portraiture 
of ours. For any thing by which we stand commit- 
ted as a people, in which the world hears the nation's 
voice, for which we are responsible in our nationality 
before God and man, we have, almost for generations, 
gone on in heartless taciturnity, shunning to avow 
indebtedness and obligation, and, by our very silence, 
claiming the supreme direction and disposal of our 



13 

ways. As we prospered, we grew insolent. Open infi- 
delity stalked abroad unblushingly, and pointed with 
sly finger to the easy and enticing road to down- 
right crime. The hint was not thrown away, and 
luxury, licentiousness, lawless riot and outrage, and 
crimes of the deepest dye, multiplied upon us in all 
directions. He who declares that he took away 
Sodom because " pride, fulness of bread, and abun- 
dance of idleness" made her " haughty," has been 
warning us by a series of visitations to consider our 
ways before it be too late. Pestilence, fire, scarcity, 
just enough to teach that we are not out of the reach 
of famine ; commercial derangements and disaster 
almost equivalent to universal bankruptcj'; the pros- 
tration of individual and national credit ; war of the 
most expensive, disgraceful, and unprofitable kind ; 
and now, last of all, the decease of the man to whom 
a large majority of the nation professed to look for a 
remedy of at least a portion of these evils, just when 
placed where they had longed, and labored, and con- 
tended with unexampled energy that he might be : is this 
succession of disasters, crowded into less than seven 
short years, mistakeable? If ever Providence assumed 
the form of revelation, it has done so for us, and made 
known our danger and God's will. We are a mo- 
ney-getting, money-loving people, and money has 
been made our curse. We boasted in our hearts, and 



19 

our very public prints, in their garrulity, proclaimed 
the boast, that the scourges of the Lord had no mis- 
sion for our shores, and in the twinkling of an eye 
they were upon us — pestilence in all its horror; war, 
without its glories ; and want, even while the soil gave 
its customary returns for labor, and the seasons smiled 
upon the husbandman. We glory in our institutions, 
and now, in their highest instrument and symbol, they 
wither under the finger of the Lord. 

"Thou son of man," said his spirit, of old time, to 
the Prophet, "shall it not be, in the day when I take 
from them their strength, the joy of their glory, the 
desire of their eyes, and that whereon they set their 
minds — that he that escapeth in that day shall come 
unto thee, to cause thee to hear it in thine ears! In 
that day shall thy mouth be opened to him which is 
escaped, and thou shalt speak, and be no more dumb; 
and thou shalt be a sign unto them, and they shall 
know that I am the Lord." 

What message, think you, brethren, would the Pro- 
phet utter in our ears, in fulfilment of this charge? 
Would he not say to him whom God has so strangely 
called to take place among the rulers of the earth, 
" Remember who has given thee authority, and wield 
it as in His sight, and as accountable to Him. Re- 
member that he who so lately bore it has been able 
to take with him none of the myriads of favoring 



20 

breaths that swelled the sale of his prosperity, but 
has gone alone to judgment. Remember that, for 
thought, word, and deed, the first man among his peo- 
ple has a vastly different account to render from the 
private citizen, whose omissions and short comings, 
negligences and indifference, may hurt no one but 
himself, which the ruler's never can. Remember 
thine own weakness, and ivho is able to make thee 
strong!" 

Would he not urge the counsellors in whose wis- 
dom lies the secret of the nation's strength, to " become 
fools" in the sense of the Apostle. " that they may be 
wise;" to humble themselves at the feet of Christ 
their Saviour, and repose their trust, their hopes, their 
stay, on the Redeemer who claims them as his pur- 
chase, that their high responsibilities may be turned to 
use for the fulfilment of His mission of mercy, peace, 
and blessinji to a race sold under sin ! To bear in me- 
mory that, in proportion to the measure of the gifts of 
mind and station with which their Maker has endowed 
them, will be the reward through Christ of faithful- 
ness, and the punishment of neglect to use them for 
His glory ? 

Would he not * open his mouth" in indignant ex- 
postulation with the legislator whose unblushing dis- 
regard of the laws of God and man has filled our 
council hails with brawling, bitterness, the murderer's 



21 

threat, and the spewing of the drunkard, and spread 
a foul example of heady passion and ungoverned self- 
indulgence throughout the land? Would he " be 
dumb" to refrain from reproaching them with worse 
than brutish ignorance of their own position and 
accountability ; from warning them that for all these 
things God will bring them into judgment, and exact 
of them n reckoning for sins which their example fos- 
tered, while it was their mission to repress them, for 
high and holy privileges and functions worse than 
prostituted, and for duties never even realized, far less 
performed ? 

Would he withhold His reproofs from those whose 
craving thirst for gain bids fair to realize the worst 
exaggerations of the satirist, and settle a foul stain 
upon our character as a people ? Would he pass 
unnoticed the low estimate of honorable industry and 
unsullied poverty, in the false standards of public 
opinion, when compared with splendor purchased by 
base breach of trust or dishonest paltering with oaths 
and contracts ? Would he leave unwarned the thou- 
sands who incur debts they can never pay, and bur- 
den life with miserable shifts and meannesses, for the 
sake of keeping up appearances unsuited to their 
station, and building on a rotten credit a false respect- 
ability ? 

These things are not the mere outbreaks of the 



22 

taint of sin that spreads equally through our race. 
They already go far toward distinguishing us as a 
nation; toward constituting traits of popular charac- 
ter, and a part — Oh ! the goading shame — of our re- 
putation as a country! 

" For these things I weep ; mine eye, mine eye 
runneth down with waters, becRiise the comforter 
that should relieve my soul is far from me." No 
series of calamities, no sudden blow could oppress or 
surprise a people steadfast in its own moral purity 
and greatness. We have enough left of both, by 
God's blessing, to bear us through our trials; but 
they are trials, and most sore ones, because the sting 
of self-condemnation rankles in the wound they make. 
The loss we now mourn is doubled by the need that 
such a people had of such a head. The visitation 
derives new seventy from the assurance that abuse of 
blessings had deserved it. 

How then shall we receive it? In a spirit of 
querulous complaint, raising our voice against the 
times, the people, the government, the abuses of 
trade and trust, the growth of luxury — every thing, 
but ourselves? No, brethren, not if we are indeed 
profited. There could be no worse symptom of in- 
curable disease than such a result, in the clamorous 
outcry of each against all; of all against abstraction 
and generalities ; of classes against classes ; profes- 



23 

sions against professions; member against member, 
of the one great body. It is the cure of individuals 
that is needed to effect the relief of the mass, and it 
is as individuals that they must be cured, and, in great 
degree, by their own resort to the proper remedies. 
Laws we have, and good ones; but example is wanting, 
to give law its due honor and restraining power — 
example, of value, undoubtedly, in proportion to the 
station of the individual, but in no case, from the 
highest to the lowest, without its worth and efficacv. 
Let each, in his place, show forth in himself the fruits 
of a holy and religious fear of the Lord and Judge of 
all. Let each turn his thoughts inward and back- 
ward, on his own conscience and past course, and 
seek there the work that is for him to do. Who 
among us has lived in the sight of God, so as to 
deserve his own share of our large measure of public 
and private blessings ? Whose heart holds him ex- 
cused of unbelief, ingratitude, unholiness, contamina- 
ting his thoughts and speech and life? How many, 
even openly, profess to regard these crimes, as toward 
God, as of minor importance, or of none, compared 
with the violations of the rule of right as between 
man and man. A more horrible fallacy never deluded 
man's self-deceiving heart ; yet they who entertain it 
and live upon it from day to day and year after year, 
take their place in the community, mingle in its inte- 



24 

rests, even assume its management, and when the 
tokens of indignation are no longer to be mistaken, 
say, "why, what evil have 1 done?" What evil? 
Insulted the majesty of the most high by the refusal 
or contempt of the provisions of His mercy ! Is that 
a right thing? Despised the treasure of His fondest 
love, lavished in the mission of His Son, with His 
message of redemption, pardon, and spiritual life ? Is 
that a matter of no account ? Proclaimed before men 
and angels that His own revelation of His attributes 
and will is for vou no better than a lie ! Is that 
nothing ? 

My brethren, as God liveth, these things must be 
accounted for! And the prevalence among us, under 
the noonday blaze of Gospel light that we enjoy, of 
so great a degree of practical and secret infidelity, and 
the culpable indifference towards it shown by profes- 
sing Christians, is accounted for, in the evils that have 
come upon us; not in the way of retribution, but in 
admonition, rebuke, and fatherly premonition of the 
worse judgment that one day awaits those who have 
here been content to waste their time of trial in a 
practical denial of the Lord who bought them! 
"The Lord's voice crieth unto the city, Hear 
ye the rod, and who hath appointed it ! " 



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